


healing

by amaelamin



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-War, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7609645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaelamin/pseuds/amaelamin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fic prompt: conversations with an alien - mental health facility au; sungyeol believes he's not from earth and myungsoo can be another patient or a psychiatrist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	healing

**Author's Note:**

> A short disclaimer just in case: I don't pretend to be an expert on mental illness, or think that mental illness can be easily cured. My fic doesn't intend to insinuate that in any way.
> 
> originally posted on AFF on 28 oct 2013.

Myungsoo always did his rounds at around a quarter past one – the patients had all had their meals by then which generally made them more amiable, more relaxed; if he had to be completely truthful, he’d admit that the credit was not due to the head of the kitchen, Mrs Chang’s, excellent cooking but rather to the low-key sedatives that were administered in the food to the more aggressive inmates. It wasn’t a perfect system by far, but it was the system he had learned to work with; it kept everything “peaceable”, as the caretakers and nurses said. He couldn’t argue with that, though he knew deep down without any uncertainty that it wasn’t right.

He walked at a comfortable pace through the old building – large windows letting sunlight into the rooms that housed up to four people at a time – they were much luckier than most asylum inmates, he knew – sometimes for a few months, sometimes far longer than that. There was always a sense of melancholy about the place – not exactly sorrowful, or miserable, but a quiet sadness that spoke of stalemated futures and foggy confusion. His heels clicked as he turned into his favourite room; red roses grew up the outsides of the window.

“This’ll do nicely. Until of course they come to get me,” a young man was saying to Myungsoo’s right – he looked up from speaking softly to the quiet woman in the bed before him to see that someone new was moving into Jina’s old bed. Poor Jina – and Myungsoo cut off that line of thought immediately. The nurse walked behind the man – boy? – who was wheeling himself into the room in a wheelchair and helped him put his bags neatly in a corner.

This new person was all sweet smiles, settling in with his few possessions quickly and making himself comfortable with the help of the nurse. Spying a teapot on the bedside table of his neighbor, he reached over with a long arm and some effort to helpfully pour The General a cup of tea; and was subsequently alarmed by The General snatching his mug away from him in a spirit of high offence. Myungsoo guessed no one had told the newbie that The General had only one peculiarity – apart from his insistence on being called ‘The General’ – and that was to be utensil-larily territorial.

Myungsoo stroked the quiet woman’s hand and left her to stare blankly into space as usual so that he could make his way over to the new patient, now lying in bed and trying to ignore the glares The General was still giving him.

“Oh, hi! It must be packed around here if all your hotels are full up, isn’t it? This has to be the first time I’ve been put up in a hospital because there’re not any other available beds in the entire town! This’ll be something to tell the people back home. Oh well, it’s only temporary, huh?”

Myungsoo smiled noncommittally at this barrage of conversation, something he’s gotten quite good at over the past year and a half at the asylum. It meant, _I don’t know what you’re talking about, poor crazy person, but I can pretend very well that I do so that you don’t get frustrated and start yelling or throwing things_. He picked up the patient’s file from the foot of his bed and flipped it open casually.

_Name: Lee Sungyeol_

_Age: 19_

_Diagnosis: Schizophrenia (believes he’s not from Earth – he’s due to be picked up soon to be brought back ‘home’, a planet called Hajodae)_

_Background: Recently honourably discharged from active military duty on account of disability_

Myungsoo felt his eyes drawn back to Sungyeol’s body at the word ‘disability’, and saw it. _Ah._

War trauma. A quarter of the patients in the place were in here because of it, the deep scar torn through the country that nobody wanted to talk about. Myungsoo took his leave which Sungyeol politely granted, and then proceeded to watch Sungyeol from the door of the ward as he looked around good-naturedly for someone to talk to. Myungsoo’s eyes lingered on the blanket-covered right leg that ended rather abruptly just above the knee, and wondered how Sungyeol had lost it – the wheelchair, then, hadn’t been just hospital courtesy. He wondered, not for the first time, if this place was better than what the patients would have to face outside. _For Sungyeol_ , he thought, _it very well might be_.

**

The next day

“Good afternoon, Mr Lee, and how was lunch?”

Sungyeol looked up and let out a surprised laugh. “Mr Lee? Oh my God, nobody’s ever called me that before. Just Sungyeol’s fine, please. I never got your name?”

Myungsoo smiled back, feeling pity bloom in his chest for this cheery lost boy. “My name is Myungsoo. I’ve just started training to be a doctor, so it’ll be Doctor Kim in a few years, I hope.”

Sungyeol looked deeply impressed. “A doctor! My parents wanted me to be a doctor. But I’m a carpenter. Sometimes a farmer. I like working with things from the earth and frankly I don’t think I’d be very good with blood.” He mock-shuddered. “Are you staying here, too? For a holiday?”

“Yes, a short one,” Myungsoo answered, deciding to play along for the moment and filing away mental notes for later – _an ex-soldier with a dread of blood_. He sat down on Sungyeol’s bed, slightly behind Sungyeol himself in his wheelchair looking out into the lovely gardens outside. “Would you like to go outside? I was just about to go into the garden for a walk.” The smile Sungyeol turned to Myungsoo was almost as bright as the sun on their faces once they’d made it through the main doors (“Oh, allow me,” Myungsoo said, taking hold of the handles of Sungyeol’s wheelchair. “No, I can manage it,” Sungyeol replied, abrupt steel in his voice making Myungsoo let go and step back instantly.)

Sungyeol closed his eyes as they reached the little fountain in the middle of the garden surrounding the grounds, and tilted his head back.

“You’ll get a tan on your face and nowhere else,” Myungsoo joked gently, still keeping to safe subjects.

“Oh, that’s alright,” Sungyeol laughed; laughter came easily to him. “It’ll be a nice reminder of my time here once I’m back home. I wish I could bring some of these roses back with me – I think my parents would love them growing up the side of our house.”

Myungsoo decided to chance it, watching Sungyeol carefully as he sank down on a bench nearby. “Where is home?”

He’d said the right thing – Sungyeol turned to him and positively beamed. “I really wish you could see it. It’s the most perfect place – little cottage houses surrounding the sea, and huge fields of fresh vegetables and golden wheat once it’s ripe. It’s always so quiet there, and the people are so nice. Our village’s specialty is raspberry wine.” Sungyeol heaved a deep sigh, and then smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I really do love it.”

“I can tell!” Myungsoo grinned, and Sungyeol looked down into his lap, smile still on his face.

“It’s on another planet, you know. My parents are coming to get me in their ship and this is the closest area to where they’ll be able to land. That’s why I came here.”

Sungyeol’s face and tone were completely nonchalant as he told Myungsoo this and Myungsoo felt something sink in his chest, watching Sungyeol in the sun but confined to his chair.

“I see. When are your parents picking you up?”

“A week from today.”

**

Three days later

“Weren’t your parents supposed to come today, Sungyeol?”

“Oh no, you must be mistaken. They’re not due for a week yet,” Sungyeol answered the nurse, accepting his tray of food from her and tucking into the rice eagerly. It was never anything luxurious, though Mrs Chang certainly was adept at making the cheapest ingredients taste amazing – but Sungyeol always ate like he was starving, and he made his appreciation loudly known.

**

Two days later

“I was thinking,” Sungyeol started once he’d spotted Myungsoo as usual on his daily rounds. “Do you think we have space to put up my parents for a night when they arrive in a week’s time? I’m sure they’ll be tired from all the travelling and would love to have a night’s rest before we start on the return trip. Plus they have to taste one of Mrs Chang’s dinners. And meet everyone else, of course. I normally wouldn’t ask but since everywhere else is full…?”

“I’m not sure, you’d have to ask the management,” Myungsoo replied evenly, and Sungyeol seemed to contemplate his answer. “I’ll go ask them later,” he said finally. “Help me with this crossword in the newspaper.”

**

Sungyeol, it turned out, had the ability to rationalize anything so that it didn’t clash with his chosen worldview:

1.      He wasn’t in a mental asylum, he had been put up temporarily in a hospital while he waited for his parents to come and get him because all other lodging in the area was full. The other patients in his ‘room’ were merely lonely and wanting a bit of company, so he felt bad chasing them out although he did sometimes complain privately to Myungsoo that it was hell when he wanted a bit of undisturbed sleep; it seems he wasn’t bothered by all the extra beds nor the other inmates’ possessions lying about.

 

2.      His parents were always coming ‘a week from today’, no matter what day it was. Myungsoo was almost desperate with the need to find out just what day it was all the time in Sungyeol’s head.

 

3.      Sungyeol never mentioned the army, or the war. If asked where he was before coming to the hospital he’d go uncharacteristically silent, and answer evasively “here and there, doing this and that.”

 

4.      He also never gave any sign that he was aware of the loss of his leg – he acted as if the wheelchair was an extension of himself, and Myungsoo still remembered the sharpness with which Sungyeol had insisted he wheel himself out to the gardens that first day.

 

They had settled into a routine that the both of them enjoyed. Myungsoo would come to see Sungyeol in the morning, and then again at lunchtime; they’d go for a jaunt in the gardens, or stay in the music room when it was raining. Myungsoo would help Sungyeol with his crosswords and Sungyeol would ramble on about Hajodae, the food at lunch, how the quiet woman in his room never moved except to scratch _just this one spot_ on her arm and so on and so forth. How much Sungyeol did not realize, and how much he was pretending – Myungsoo needed to know.

**

Two days later

“Your rounds are becoming shorter and shorter,” Myungsoo’s superior said without preamble. “Spending so much time on one patient is not recommended. You do not become attached in this line of work.”

“I’m just fascinated, sir,” Myungsoo admitted helplessly. “His form of delusion is so complete, so seamless with the reality he’s in. I know we’re primarily a care center, not a psychiatric hospital, but – don’t you want to know how to cure him?”

His superior watched Myungsoo over the rim of his spectacles for a few moments too long. “Do you think he wants to be cured?”

He passed Myungsoo a file, a thicker one than the one Myungsoo’s already read on Sungyeol, and left the office before Myungsoo could recover himself.

**

A day later

The panic attack happened without warning, though Myungsoo later felt like it could have been seen coming a mile away; a new, inexperienced ward nurse who had not yet been thoroughly briefed on the patients’ particular delusions and bandages on Sungyeol’s leg that were due for a change.

Myungsoo wheeled Sungyeol away quickly into an empty room and left the lights off while Sungyeol gasped for air, knuckles white on the wheelchair’s armrests. He didn’t know if he should try to comfort Sungyeol beyond giving him space to even out his breathing and calm down, or whether he should be trying to reassure the nurse who had nearly been thrown to the ground when she tried to touch the stump of Sungyeol’s leg to unwrap his bandages – she’d been level-headed and hadn’t let herself get scared off, but Sungyeol was screaming down the roof and he’d had to be removed.

Myungsoo put a cautious hand on Sungyeol’s shoulder and another on top of one of his cold hands, knowing that he should be using words to comfort and not touch, given what had just happened. But Sungyeol let go of the wheelchair’s armrest and gripped Myungsoo’s hand instead, his struggle with his breathing gradually subsiding until it was just a hitch in his chest.

Myungsoo thought of Sungyeol’s file, still sitting on his desk and unread for a reason he himself couldn’t name. He’d have to read it soon, he decided, and watched as Sungyeol dropped his face into his hands.

“We change his bandages at night when he’s sleeping,” Myungsoo explained to the nurse later. “Patients here usually get a sleeping pill with their supper to help them sleep.” The lie rolled off his tongue easily – he knew the sleeping pills had nothing to do with the patients’ comfort.

The nurse nodded quickly, still apologetic and embarrassed. Later, Myungsoo wondered if his anger was due to the fact that someone clearly hadn’t been doing their job of briefing the new staff properly, or if it was because of the broken look on Sungyeol’s face when he’d finally let go of Myungsoo’s hand and raised his head, tear tracks down both cheeks.

**

The next day, Sungyeol picked a bouquet from the garden for the new nurse in apology and fidgeted while she took it from him; a smile from her and all was well. He told her about Hajodae, that day, and Myungsoo didn’t miss the fleeting look of recognition that crossed her face before her expression settled.

He knew it – he’d known it in his gut. Hajodae was somewhere real.

**

The file was waiting for him as he squeezed into his tiny cubicle in the caretakers’ office – cramped and stuffy it was, which is why he and most of the other staff could usually be found elsewhere. For that reason it afforded the one thing that Myungsoo needed right then – privacy. He flipped open the first few pages to diagnoses and tests, a previous military hospital’s records where Myungsoo had stayed for almost two months – where they’d patched him up as best they could in the places they could reach and see.

Sungyeol read quietly, the slow flipping of the pages the only sound in the deserted office. The file lay forgotten in his lap long after he’d read the last word, his fingers playing fitfully on the desktop.

**

_The nightly bombing was tearing them all to shreds – in pieces of flesh and their remaining sanity, because nothing seemed to matter at all when they were stuck here in this part of the forest with no way out except to wait for the inevitable. Sungyeol knew he was going to die with a leaden certainty that filled his bones. It was just a matter of time._

_He woke, he was forced to eat, he crouched in a muddy foxhole the whole day while gunfire and explosions sounded all around him to the point he’d become quite good at tuning it out. He couldn’t really remember what soap and toothpaste felt like anymore, and he didn’t really care. He was going to die, after all._

_They tried to break out of the deadend, those of them who were left – the backup only found him two days later, half-alive and terrified. They tried to fix his body, whatever that was left to fix, and left his mind to the professionals. Sungyeol didn’t really care. He was already dead._

**

Five weeks later

Myungsoo had an idea, but how to broach it with Sungyeol – that was the hard part. He settled for leaving the crutches next to Sungyeol’s bed, hoping it wouldn’t provoke him; Sungyeol ignored them for the next two weeks.

And then one morning Sungyeol greeted Myungsoo as the latter came to find him in the garden for their usual post-breakfast airing, awkwardly balancing on the crutches but trying to act as if he’d used them every day of his life. Myungsoo could only gape for a few seconds, because he hadn’t realized how tall Sungyeol really was – a good half-head taller than himself, and a disconcerting sight; he was used to looking down at Sungyeol when they spoke, and now he had to look up. Myungsoo half-wanted to grab Sungyeol in a fierce hug, and the other half wanted to go put on stacked heels.

Myungsoo decided to approach the situation with the blunt nonchalance Sungyeol seemed to adopt with all sensitive situations and wordlessly helped Sungyeol adjust the height of the crutches so that he was more comfortable. Sungyeol accepted the help just as silently, and then proceeded to hobble further into the garden, beginning to prattle away as usual. Myungsoo followed a few moments later, blinking hard.

**

Another week later

“He has no parents, right?” Sora asked Myungsoo one day. He knew she still kept the bouquet Sungyeol had picked for her her second day on the job, either as a reminder of the strange rewards the job had in store, or simply as a token of how much she had come to adore Sungyeol. She pampered him to the gills which Sungyeol enjoyed shamelessly, of course. She’d been the only other person Myungsoo had shown Sungyeol’s private file to. “No one’s ever coming to pick him up.”

Myungsoo kept his eyes on his rounds report for the day. “You _know_ nobody’s actually coming to take him to another planet.”

“I know _that_ ,” Sora answered impatiently. “I mean his real-life parents. Or any other kind of family? Aunt? Uncle? Grandparents? _Is he alone?_ ”

Family who knew where he was and didn’t come to visit – family who didn’t know and thought he was dead – family who would want to take him back out of love but would instead end up pushing him further into his delusions because they wouldn’t know how to handle him – family that would still fit into the world he’d created for himself?

“I don’t know, Sora,” Myungsoo said quietly.

**

Three days later

“Hajodae is in Gangwon-do,” the quiet woman said.

 _You could hear a pin drop_ , Myungsoo thought in the silence that followed. He’d never really understood that phrase, but in the absolute and expectant silence that flowed through the ward till it lapped at the foot of Sungyeol’s bed, he thought he could imagine it – the pure bell of a pin hitting the floor.

He’d stopped in the act of filling in the word C-O-A-L-E-S-C-E-N-C-E into Sungyeol’s crossword, and slowly let his eyes travel over to Sungyeol’s face. The quiet woman rarely spoke, if at all, and this was out of the blue, like she was replying to a conversation long forgotten. Sungyeol swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and Myungsoo had to grit his teeth to stop the premature anxiety that was threatening to burst in his chest.

The quiet woman closed her eyes and leaned back on her pillow, and The General cleared his throat self-consciously, reaching to count his spoons and forks one more time before bed to give himself something to do. Sound ebbed back into the ward, but Myungsoo was still watching Sungyeol.

When the lights were turned off by an orderly at ten o’clock, Myungsoo rose uneasily from his bedside chair. Sungyeol hadn’t said a word for two hours, and Myungsoo had never felt so helpless.

Sungyeol moved suddenly in the dark, swinging his one good leg over the side of the bed and groping for his crutches. Myungsoo instinctively passed them to him before remembering that patients weren’t allowed out of the wards after lights-out, but he was at a total loss as to what to do and the only thought running through his mind was that if Sungyeol tried to murder the quiet woman, he was the only person who could stop him. Sungyeol didn’t stop at her bed once he stood up, though, but moved through the doors and down the hallways to the main garden entrance. He’d taken to the crutches quickly, all but abandoning his wheelchair, and could move around easily now albeit with some pain, Myungsoo knew. He also knew that he should have called for a nurse or caretaker by now instead of following Sungyeol out into the garden to God knew what end.

Sungyeol halted by the fountain, hesitant, and Myungsoo stopped a few paces behind him. He had no idea if he should approach Sungyeol, or say something, but Sungyeol beat him to it.

“No one’s coming for me,” Sungyeol said, voice sounding like his throat was raw. “My parents are dead.”

The sounds of the garden by night went on as usual, but Myungsoo’s mind and heart were racing. Did Sungyeol want to tell him, or did he just need to say it? Was he worrying that he’d been caught in a lie, exposed by the quiet woman, and needed to confess? Did Sungyeol really think Myungsoo did not know?

It was chilly in the garden, and Sungyeol was only wearing thin pajamas; the half-empty right leg flapping slightly in the breeze as he hunched over his crutches. Myungsoo wondered, later, if that was when his heart broke for Sungyeol, or whether the cracks had already been laid the day Sungyeol had come into the hospital.

**

Today

Myungsoo does the unthinkable; he knows his career [such as it is] will be up in smoke if they’re caught, but Sora is unbelievably excited when he tells her the plan and she’d never let him back out now, so they smuggle Sungyeol into Sora’s car a few hours before dawn and she drives like a madwoman all the way to Gangwon-do.

It’s nearly four hours later when they arrive at Hajodae village, after getting lost almost far too many times for Sora’s temper to withstand. But withstand it does, and Myungsoo knows that the only reason she hasn’t driven the car into a ditch in a rage is because of Sungyeol.

Sungyeol has been sitting quietly in the backseat of the car bundled up in the blanket from his own bed, and Myungsoo doesn’t really know whether to talk to him or let him be. So he dozes off and on, and sometime during the journey Sungyeol’s hand finds his. Myungsoo is torn with indecision and wants to make Sora turn back a hundred times, because this is either the best idea in the world or the absolute worst; Sungyeol’s firm grip makes him bite his tongue. Sungyeol knew where they wanted to bring him before they’d even managed to dredge up the courage to ask him, and his only answer had been a quiet nod; Myungsoo was staking everything on that one nod.

Sora finally stops the car and they get out, Myungsoo hurrying round to the other door to hand Sungyeol his crutches as he shakes off the blanket. They’ve stopped on a little road leading up to the village, and they make this walk quietly, Sora radiating anxiety on Myungsoo’s left. They come up to a short hill, and then all of Hajodae is laid out below them.

The beach is still at low tide, and there are villagers out on the mudflats picking oysters; and there are the fields of wheat Sungyeol had told him about, the spring crop already collected in and the fields left to fallow. The traditional houses spread their elegant rooftops in strict juxtaposition to the unruly raspberry bushes hanging heavy with fruit – ready for the raspberry wine Hajodae was famous for.

Sora has started to beam, and Sungyeol looks like he’s soaking everything up, memorizing it fiercely with his eyes and nose to store it up for the winter months to come.

Myungsoo asks gently about going down into the village, and catches Sungyeol’s involuntary gaze darting downwards to his leg; he quickly says they can always come back next time. Sungyeol nods, and Myungsoo understands.

The way back takes less time without Sora getting lost, and Sungyeol lays his head on Myungsoo’s shoulder with the same straightforward bluntness he does most things. Myungsoo is sure his cheeks are flaming red, but he lifts an arm around Sungyeol to allow him to get comfortable. Sungyeol’s hair tickles Myungsoo's chin, and he begins to drool once he’s asleep, but Myungsoo finds he doesn’t really mind. Sora makes cheeky faces at him through the rearview mirror. He ignores her.

They get into horrible trouble once they get home, of course. Sungyeol asks when they can go back once the lights are out, tugging Myungsoo down so that he can whisper the question, and Myungsoo whispers, “tomorrow” with a smile. He can’t really see Sungyeol’s face in the dark, but he can feel the answering grin that spreads across Sungyeol’s face when Sungyeol kisses him and it feels like it’s been a long time coming.

[It’s another month before they are able to sneak away once more, and Sora gets lost. Again.]

**


End file.
